Dog Who Longed for Puppies Nurses Kittens

EDWARDSBURG, Mich. - A Shih Tzu who, her owners say, longed for years to give birth — even to the point of going into false labor several times — finally is getting a chance to nurse some little ones: two stray kittens.



Owners Jean and Bill Schirf said the dog, named Geisha Girl, used to take a toy dog, wrap herself around it in her basket and mother it for a week or two.


Now she's doing the same thing with the kittens that Jean Schirf found two weeks ago in the woods behind her Cass County home just north of the Indiana border. The cats — a gray male and a gray-and-white female — appeared to be no more than 2 weeks old at the time, she said.


"She wraps herself around them all night long," Schirf told the South Bend (Ind.) Tribune for a story published Tuesday.


Not only did Geisha Girl start watching over and cleaning the kittens, which have been named Dilly and Dally, she started lactating within about a week — enough to provide them with some of the milk they need. Schirf helps out by bottle-feeding the cats 2 percent milk every four or five hours.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=816&ncid=816&e=1&u=/ap/20041124/ap_on_fe_st/dog_nurses_kittens

There was this dog next door that would bark at them from behind the fence when they'd be on the back porch, and they'd stand right at the edge and make this little short barking sound back at it. Their apparent fearlessness only added to how funny it was. It carried over to when they see birds, they make the barking sound at the birds, which completely ruins the stealth nature of their normal hunting habits, but I guess I'd rather them not eat birds anyways.

I feel ripped off. Cute story.

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&ie=UTF-

Haven't found pictures, don't know if it's true. Is there a way to find out for sure, it happened in EDWARDSBURG, Mich.

and I would not be at all surprised if it is true. There have been many cases of cross species nursing. Ahhhhh, it really is sweet.

We found a 2 week old kitten -- and our dog raised it. I did have to bottle feed the kitten -- but our dog took over and the cat believed that the dog was his mom. They had a mom/offspring relationship until she died.

That was 13 years ago -- we still have the cat -- our beloved dog crossed the rainbow bridge 2 years ago.

Also someone at DU has a Schnauzer who is fostering a kitten -- allows the kitten to nurse.

A couple of years ago I rescued abandoned kittens and my Chihuahua crawled into the box and was willing to nurse them.

Also there are studies published in the Journal Animal Behavior of cat/dog cross fostering.

But photos to go along with the story would have been nice.

If only mankind could learn that lesson.